The 11th Annual Graduate English Society Conference will be held March 31st-April 1st, 2006 at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX. The theme of this year’s conference, “En(compass)ing Language: Interplay within English Studies,” reminds us that the interaction between participants in the various fields of English studies produces new ideas and foundations on which to build our future research. We hope that this conference will encourage this type of camaraderie.

The Criticism and Culture Area Chair, Leslie Starkey (leslie_starkey_at_yahoo.com), welcomes proposals (250-word abstracts) from graduate students addressing the following issues in Literary Criticism and Cultural Studies:

Critical Theory—Beyond Critique? Critical Theory and Literary Genre Popular Culture—Television and other Texts of a Commercial Reality Film—Filmic Adaptations of the Written Word: Translating Page to Screen Music—The Musician as Icon: From Artistic Intent to Popular Image

While submissions following these criteria are encouraged, submissions dealing with related issues will be considered.

Deadline for submissions: December 18, 2005.

We are please to welcome Dr. Thomas Nunnally of Auburn University as keynote speaker. Dr. Nunnally is co-editor of From the Gulf States and Beyond: The Legacy of Lee Pederson and LAGS and Language Variety in the South Revisited as well as articles and essays related to the study of sociolinguistic forces behind dialect change and lexical change. The keynote speech will be delivered Saturday, April 1st at noon and will be followed by a question and answer session.

The Texas Tech GES Conference has been pleased to welcome students from throughout the United States, as well as countries abroad. We are looking forward to sharing research and fostering discussion among students. Lodging and registration details will be available on the GES Conference website.